What recipes are used to harvest cucumbers for the winter. Pickled, fermented with tomatoes or zucchini, using dry spices and herbs. Someone prefers salting in barrels, someone in glass containers. But there are several simple ways to pickle cucumbers that even an inexperienced housewife can handle.
Pickling cucumbers in glass jars
This recipe is an easy way to preserve vegetables in three-liter glass jars. Hermetic sealing of containers is capable of providing high quality pickles and long-term storage of the product during the winter at a temperature not exceeding 20 ° C.
For pickling, the cucumbers should be washed, tightly packed in glass cylinders, shifting them with spices. If possible, cucumbers should be selected of the same size and thickness so that the salting process occurs evenly.
To preserve 10 kg of cucumbers, the following amount of spices must be prepared:
- 300 grams of dill;
- 50 grams of peeled horseradish roots;
- 30 grams of garlic cloves;
- 10 grams of hot paprika.
To enhance the flavor and aroma of pickles, you can add the following spices:
- currant leaves;
- stalks and leaves of celery;
- parsley;
- stems with dill inflorescences;
- horseradish leaves;
- basil sprigs.
To give the cucumbers a special strength, you can add oak and cherry leaves to the jars. The total weight of the spices should not exceed 5% of the weight of the cucumbers.
It should be remembered that excessive amounts of herbs can give pickles a bitter and unpleasant taste.
Most of the spices should be placed in a jar on top of the cucumbers to keep them from floating. Then the cucumbers must be poured with brine. To prepare it you will need:
- 10 liters of water;
- 700-800 grams of rock salt.
Do not use iodized salt for pickling vegetables.
Cucumbers filled with brine must stand in this form for five to six days at a temperature of 18-20 ° C to complete the fermentation process. During this period, it is necessary to regularly remove the formed film or foam with mold (if they appear) from the brine surface. If necessary, you can add brine of the same strength to the banks.
At the end of fermentation from glass bottles, you need to drain all the brine into a saucepan and boil. The foam that appears during boiling should be removed from the surface of the liquid, and then pour the brine back into the jars with cucumbers.
In order for the cucumbers to retain their crunch and elasticity after fermentation, you can add a little dry mustard to the brine before boiling.
After 3-5 minutes, the brine must be again poured into a saucepan and heated to a boiling stage. After that, the cucumbers must be re-poured with brine and hermetically sealed with sterilized lids.
Pickled cucumbers in tomato sauce
You can get spicy cucumbers if instead of brine at the end of the fermentation process (3-5 days after salting), pour jars of cucumbers with hot (95 ° C) salted tomato juice, you will need:
- 1 liter of juice;
- 15-20 grams of rock salt.
In this case, additional sterilization of cans with pickled cucumbers is required: three-liter jars - 50 minutes, liter jars - half an hour. After sterilization, containers with cucumbers should be tightened with boiled lids, turned over and wrapped warmly.
